Tales from the Yurt number 2:
An occasional series of cautionary fables: "Donkey Hokey"
Come into the yurt. Find a place closer to the fire. Here is my story. It’s all true, especially the parts that didn’t happen.
Once upon a time, long long ago, there was a businessman called Karn. Now Karn believed he was a fine salesman, on the evidence of his own self-self esteem.
Karn was looking for a new business opportunity when he visited the seaside.
There were a number of donkeys tethered on the beach. From time to time a small child would sit on one and be led in a small circle. Money would change hands. Karn approached the donkey-meister.
"Tell me," he asked, "what is your business model?"
The donkey-meister looked oddly at Karn, and then said, "I have these donkeys, and when children want a ride on one they give me a dollar. That’s it really."
Karn was astonished at the man’s lack of initiative! This was a massive opportunity!
So Karn grabbed himself some donkeys, set up at the other end of the beach, and hired a team of salesmen to go out into the town and find him customers. The donkey ride salesmen immediately set about the important tasks of calculating their probable bonuses, writing complex forecasting spreadsheets, and undertaking workshops on "Donkeys – walking the walk".
Costs were very high to begin with but the sales projections looked very good. In fact, if the trends that were emerging in June kept up Karn reckoned he would have broken even by mid-October. And everything after that until the end of the year would be pure profit!
Sadly, the business dropped off badly when the weather turned cold and Karn was faced with a big loss. Karn looked hard at the way he was operating and decided to change the sales approach. Instead of scouring the town for punters, now Karn’s sales people would be account managers. The goal was to sell more donkey rides to the existing customers.
The weather brightened and each child perched on one of Karn’s donkeys soon found a smiling person walking beside them, offering ice creams, soft drinks and sweets. "Thanks very much," said the small children – those who didn’t burst into tears.
Karn looked at the figures. Costs were high, but the projections were excellent. At this rate, if the trends could be maintained Karn reckoned he would be in gravy by November.
However, at the end of the summer the days got shorter, the weather much cooler, and the holidaying families were gone. Again Karn faced a big loss.
If only we had some more customers, Karn thought. So he told his account managers they needed to re-focus their efforts. They revised their spreadsheets, and set about transforming the business.
On and on, year after year it went on. Karn flip flopped between the hunt for more punters and the quest to sell more rides to the customers he had. Every year the sales projection would look good until the moment they didn’t. He hired and fired, he even bought a flag but soon realised that marketing was no substitute for sales people.
He beat the donkeys for their lack of performance. There must be problems with the infrastructure! He got rid of the expensive donkeys and found some that were old and sick and useless. He even tried to replace them with some mules he bought at a bankrupt business sale.
And nothing worked.
When his business finally folded Karn watched the old donkey-meister buy the remaining donkeys. Karn laughed to himself – if he had failed with all his experience how could the simple donkey meister succeed? After all he didn’t even have a sales team or a business model!
Any system left to itself achieves a state of maximum inconvenience